Too $hort: Gettin’ It (Album Number Ten) Album Review

The band’s fusion of Ant Banks’ sampling techniques and knob-turning sorcery with live instrumentation that put improvisatory spins on spiritual funk odysseys of the past—from George Clinton and Bootsy Collins to Kool and the Gang and the Ohio Players—fueled Too $hort’s five-year bender. It sparked his sharpest and most granular storytelling, and it was fun as hell, too, this deep pocket of style and sound that never bent over backward for a crossover hit. It all led up to Gettin’ It, a grand, reflective finale where $hort grapples with his rap game mortality and legacy—sometimes thoughtfully, other times recklessly—while keeping the raunchiness and sub-bass sound of mobb music intact.

To reinforce the grizzled, weathered aura, Too $hort loosely billed Gettin’ It as a “retirement” album, one of the first of its kind in hip-hop. Of course, like Master P’s MP Da Last Don, or Jay-Z’s The Black Album, it turned out to be more of a dramatic hiatus. He doesn’t even make it through the whole album before definitive statements on the intro like “We gonna’ kick it like this on the last album” turn to hedges by the penultimate track: “This might be the last album I make y’all.”

It does feel like the end of an era, though. By 1993, $hort had settled into his new home in Atlanta—on the album he says it’s because of violence, today he claims it was because Freaknik was so lit—and you sense him second-guessing whether he’s lost that connection with Oakland. On “That’s Why,” over a groovy bass lick and hypnotic synths, Too $hort reminds the younger generation of his Bay Area bona fides, which includes having “sixteen hos/Suckin’ ten toes” and a warning to newer rappers trying to replace him, specifically the duo Luniz: “When you was in the fourth grade I had a record deal/You got one hit record now you ballin’/You make one fake album and you’ll be fallin’.” He flashes one of the coolest parts about getting older in rap: more room to self-mythologize.

That’s true of “Survivin’ the Game,” too, where, in between a few political statements, $hort sounds like the seasoned cowboy in a Western reflecting on the fruitful days before the railroads were built. His nostalgia makes him sound like he just turned 60, not 30, which I guess makes sense in hip-hop, but he owns it: “I’m 30 years old, and far from done,” he spits, silky as ever, once again forgetting that he’s contemplating retirement.

Even his verses about getting ass have that one-last-job feel to them. He treats one more dirty mack on “Bad Ways” as if it’s Derek Jeter’s final at-bat. He admits to wanting to get his ass licked on “Nasty Rhymes,” the type of confession that a hypermasculine rapper would only make if he thought he was peacing out. And also “Nasty Rhymes” finally reckons with Too $hort’s rampant and long-running misogyny. Sort of.